I’m blown away by the fact that post-secondary design education is still a thing. There are countless tutorials for every aspect of design, more often than not presented by individuals significantly more qualified than your average university/college instructor. Don’t get me wrong, you still need an education to be a good designer, no question about it. But do you need a traditional education? Fuck. No.

And it’s not like there aren’t countless instances of terrible design being perpetrated by “designers” with diplomas. The real trick to getting a good education is being able to sift through the garbage to find legitimate knowledge and industry insight.

In this post, I will be acting as your illegitimate instructor; your design filter; your guide across a galaxy of horse-shit design nonsense. I will be updating this post irregularly with tips, links, and anything else that will help you along your design journey.

So, here we go…

BASICS:

Adobe Creative CloudYeah, these guys suck… but using anything other than Adobe’s creative suite of products is asking for trouble. Adobe file formats are industry standard. And while there are alternatives out there, none of them are worth the hassle of having to work around Adobe. Pay them for their (ridiculously overpriced) software and get on with your work.

The Futur: Online Education for Creative EntrepreneursThis YouTube channel is pretty solid. Chris Do and colleagues share their industry knowledge in well-presented videos on a variety of subjects. Sometimes they aren’t quite as focused as you’d expect or want, but there’s almost always good advice for amateurs and professionals alike.

RANDOM TIPS:

Stop using QR codes in your marketing materials. It was a fad and no one used them even when they were ‘popular’. Using them today is like waving a flag that reads: “We have no idea what the fuck we’re doing!”

Learn how to proofread your work. Spelling and grammatical errors are a fact of life. Hell, I’ve probably made a ton of mistakes in the last few sentences alone. But this is a ‘do as I say, not as I do’ moment. If you’re designing something for a client you should be triple-checking your copy. Odds are they won’t, and mistakes make you both look bad.